FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention concerns an apparatus for the handling and the precision assembling of mechanical components in mass-production, specially of motor-vehicles.
More particularly, the invention concerns an apparatus for assembling heavy components, such as doors in mass-production of cars, lorries and motor-vehicles in general. As it is known, a priority objective in mass-production, such as the production of motor-vehicles on an assembly line, is the reduction of the percentage of manual work needed by using robotized systems.
However it was observed that this solution has given positive results only in some applications, such as for example in the welding of the different components of a car body, while it proved not to be applicable where the precision assembling- of mechanical components, as for instance doors, is required. In such a case, in fact, if the housing seat of the component is positioned with even a small deviation with respect to the position programmed for the robot, the latter no longer succeeds mounting the component into its relevant seat, sometimes even seriously damaging it.
In particular, it was noticed that the robotization of the mounting of doors on the body of motor-vehicles gives rise to a rejection percentage accounting for even 50%, thus necessarily involving a manual intervention in this operation. In case of components of high weight, such as specifically the car doors, systems of support and transport were developed essentially consisting of a rigid arm hanging from track-sliding means and provided with the possibility of translating in the space along three directions perpendicular to each other, as well as of oscillating about one or more axes.
The major disadvantage of this device is given by its rigidity and dimensions which involve a considerable inertia in its translation, thus complicating the small movements to adjust the piece positioning in a precision assembly process.
This being said, an object of the present invention is that of solving the aforesaid problems by means of an apparatus that makes the precision assembly of mechanical components in mass-production simple and easy.
A further object of the invention is to provide a plant for the assembly of doors of motor-vehicles in an assembly line.